About Nicholas van Rosenvelt, Sr.

Nicholas Roosevelt (or Nicholas Van Rosenvelt) was an early member of the Roosevelt family and a prominent Dutch citizen of New Amsterdam (later New York City). He was the first Roosevelt to hold elected office in North America, as an alderman.

He was born in New Amsterdam to Claes Martenzsen Van Rosenvelt, the immigrant ancestor of the Roosevelt family in America, and baptized October 2, 1658 in the Reformed Dutch Church of New Amsterdam. By 1680, he had moved to Esopus, near Kingston, New York, another early Dutch settlement in the New Netherlands. There, on April 5, 1680, he signed a petition asking for a minister for Kingston. He married Heyltje Jans Kunst in the Reformed Dutch Church of New York on December 9, 1682. During his time in Esopus, he was a fur trader on friendly terms with the Native Americans.

In 1690, he returned with his family to New York, where he was listed as having the occupation of a "bolter." He was made a freeman on August 23, 1698. Politically active, he was a supporter of the party of Jacob Leisler, who had led an insurrection in 1689 in support of the succession of Dutch stadtholder William III of Orange-Nassau to the English throne in the Revolution of 1688. Nicholas Roosevelt was an alderman from 1698 to 1701 and again for the West Ward in 1715. He died in New York City on August 30, 1742.

He had ten children, the first four baptized at Esopus and the rest in New York: Jannetie (1683), Margaretta (1685), Nicholaes (1687), Johannes (1689), Elsie (1691), Jacobus (1692), Rachel (1693; died young), Sarah 1696), Rachel (1699), and Isaac (1701; died young). Nicholas was the last common ancestor of the Oyster Bay Roosevelts (including Eleanor and Theodore Roosevelt), founded by his son Johannes, and the Hyde Park Roosevelts (including Franklin Delano Roosevelt), founded by his son Jacobus.